Take a look at your calendar. Stop reading this now and go over to your calendar.

Did you really just jump to this sentence, I know your inbox is open, switch, go take a peek at your day, and week.

See how many one hour meetings you have? Too many right? By default most folks set up meetings for an hour. And you know what happens next, the hour is filled up. Even if we just needed only 20 mins. So how are we to know that it would take only 20 mins for this discussion, you may ask. You don’t. One of the biggest compliant that team members have of projects managers, is that they set up too many meetings.

Try a 15 minute meeting instead. Invite only those who are the real decision makers, never more than 3 people, most of the time. Have a maximum of 2 agenda topics (for which you have already emailed these 3 folks the background and the decisions you are asking of them).

First of all these folks will be surprised by a 15 minute meeting and even if you goof around, it may take about 30 minutes to get to 2 agenda items. All you document at the end of the meeting are the decisions you made. You just saved 135 minutes for your project.